National Affairs: Endless Journey

In the shadow of Oahu’s bomb-pocked Schofield Barracks, where the first casualties of the Pacific war were buried nearly five years ago, service chaplains last week intoned the funeral service every 30 minutes for 48 hours. The flag-draped wooden caskets which they committed to the ground held the remains of 570 U.S. servicemen who had once been buried in temporary cemeteries in New Zealand, Samoa and the Fijis.

For most of them it was only a temporary halt in the restless, interminable march of the U.S. war dead, ordered by congressional action last May (TIME, May 27). In October the services would begin polling the next of kin of men buried in seven Hawaiian cemeteries and in Belgium, would prepare to ship them home, on request, for still another burial in national or private cemeteries.*

Of the 328,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors and marines who died overseas, only 67,000 seemed certain of resting in the peace to which they had been committed. They were the missing, the lost, the buried at sea.

*Removals would not begin until some time next spring. Because of the steel shortage, U.S. casket-makers will be unable to meet the services’ demand for seamless steel, hermetically sealed coffins until then.